THE PROPOSED COMPULSORY MEAT POOL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18446, 6 January 1922, Page 7

THE PROPOSED COMPULSORY MEAT POOL

The Chairman of the Government CSoia* niittco which recommends this compulsory '' scheme, which is making so much appre- , hension amongst producers, recently 'stated that tlrp Government had a right to interfere, as it was the largest landowner in - Now Zoaand; that there were 10,000,000 acres of Government leasehold, and a multitude of small farmers who could not Tiva under present conditions. This is true—and those men never will- ■ be able to make a living while the value of, their land is so inflated. It is an easy thing to divert attention frpm the Government’s bod bargain in land ?j, by calling for a compulsory meat pool, and screaming about poor prices of meat; but the Government knows quite well that to- * day’s market prices for meat at Home are J well above pre-war rates; moreover,',it .is v, well known that the meat prices of four months ago are not likely to coupe again; | and should be recognised that' the oipy , remedy is. for the inflated value of tho land to bo deflated to reasonable levels. Governments very rarely exercise common • • sense in their business transactions—their officials have never been trained to think in business terms—and in this ease the New Zealand needs sternly telling to cease fooling with the meat trade, which it is not competent to handle, arid come to the help of the thousands of poor fellows who have been landed with . land at uncommercial values by the Government. This should be done by writing down these artificial value® to one-half or i one-third, just like • hundreds of merchants have had to do with their stocks.“There ia no royal road to prosperity,” ; said the Premier in his New Year’s message. Lot him take his own saying to heart, and curb the enthusiasts who, with- , out facts or experience to hamper -thetay - would re-institute Government control as ai , short cut to a commercial Utopia. ’ These socialistic experiments have an attraction for certain minds which ‘ have not been trained in business method; but the f long trail of wreckage of such experiments —from those of the oarly disciples of Karl Marx, tho German Socialist, to the colossal disaster following the attempt of Lenin and Trotsky to get rid of “capitalist”—should - be a sufficient warning against all wcllintontionod but mistaken departures from tried and proved methods of trading. Already much harm has been done.: English newspapers are giving prominence to , New Zealand folly and likening' their prosent action to Bolshevism and of Queens, 1 i land. Let us hope that the London money - < market, when Mr Massey goes there for .? ■his next loan, does not remember this and ; - does not transfer its trust to other places . at a time when all the world is begging for . ’ its assistance. Let it not be said of Now . * Zealand, in its attempt to grasp tho shadow . for the substance, that “those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.” —Advt. ",